Pacific Bases Begin Move to EMR System

Pacific Bases Begin Move to EMR System

Article excerpt

According to a Stars and Stripes report, within the next five years the U.S. military will digitize service members' medical histories, enabling their records to travel immediately to any military treatment site.

By 2011, the $1.2 billion electronic records system is expected to be fully installed across all military branches so that, eventually, an Air Force hospital treating a Marine on vacation will have access to his or her medical history through the worldwide database, Maj. Richard Lindsay, the clinical support division chief at the 121st General Hospital in Yongsan, South Korea, told the military publication.

The change is part of a Pentagon-wide push to use electronic health records and eliminate a medical paper trail that requires service members to hand-carry their records to appointments and to permanent, overseas assignments.

Yokosuka Naval Base in Japan will serve as a host site under the tri-service medical system, meaning that Camp Zama, Yokota Air Base, Camp Fuji, and all U.S. Navy ships also will rely on Yokosuka to maintain medical records. The U.S. Navy Hospital, which runs the other clinics, expects to have the system operating by July 3. …